Monday, November 5, 2007

Tyra Touts Queen of Botox as "Body Image Expert"

On last week's episode of America's Next Top Model, Tyra sat the girls down for a serious talk about body image in the fashion industry. Not surprisingly, the discussion was one of Tyra's trademark mixed messages gab fests that basically amounted to, "Girls, even though you are all beautiful and I don't think you need to lose any weight, those other mean people in the business are going to tell you to get thinner and that makes me really mad. But you kinda have to do what they tell you. Just make sure you do it in a healthy way though, 'kay? And remember, I think you're beautiful."

To reinforce her point, Tyra introduced Dr. Laurie Polis, whom she described as "having a facility and an organization that deals with beauty from the inside out." What a coincidence. We have an organization that promotes beauty from the inside out, too! Except our organization doesn't perform chemical peels and collagen injections. See, Tyra didn't mention what facility Dr. Laurie Polis runs. Google helped us out with that. It's called SoHo Skin & Laser Dermatology (a.k.a. medspa to the stars. Dr. Polis does acupuncture in addition to cosmetic treatments, but we're guessing that's probably not the bread and butter of her business). Really, TyTy? Couldn't you have tracked down an expert who actually deals with, I don't know, body image? And how are your girls supposed to smile with their eyes if their faces are frozen from Botox?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

how perfectly judgmental and ignorant of you to write this. tyra tries to be responsible here, by outing the unhealthy pressures on these models and bringing in a doctor who understands both health and beauty to participate. the aesthetic industry and the health industry CAN be tied together and this effort to do that should be applauded, not sneered at by you holier than thou writers. did you know that this doctor treats skin cancer and saved my friends life? do you know that this doctor runs an integrative health center? do you know that this doctor has experience with severe eating disorders? how seriously cynical and uninformed of you to slander someone about whom you have not even done your homework. and is it a crime for any doctor to attend to a person's self image concerns along with their health issues? i think not. and i think maybe you ought to do a little research before spewing your misdirected venom on those who consider self image part of mental and physical health.

Magali and Claire said...

Hi Anonymous,
Thanks for your comment. You're right. We don't know Dr. Polis. When we checked out her website after watching that episode, the first thing that came up was information about cosmetic treatments, so we were skeptical of her expertise in counseling young women with body image issues. In no way did we mean to belittle the life saving aspects of her practice.

We are also trying to out the unhealthy pressures of the modeling industry. Magali suffered from bulimia for seven years during the height of her modeling career--that's one of the reasons we started this blog. We apologize for coming across as judgmental.